


the bite at last

by Edoro



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Asexual Character, Date Rape, Drinking, Drug Use, M/M, Manipulation, Oral Sex, Trans Elias Bouchard, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:08:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26157025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edoro/pseuds/Edoro
Summary: After a lovely evening of theater and perhaps a bit too much wine, Elias invites Jon back to his home for a nightcap.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 20
Kudos: 80
Collections: Jonelias Week 2020





	the bite at last

**Author's Note:**

> Written for JonElias week, looked over and commented on by so many excellent folks who helped me make it good. Thank you Cat, Vince, Dundee, Magpie, and Aud, you're all excellent.
> 
> A couple of content notes:  
> -What it says on the tin.  
> -Elias is a trans man. Jon is nonbinary but closeted; this is briefly mentioned and not particularly relevant to the story.  
> -During the course of the fic, Jon reflects on having been pressured into sex in past relationships as well as having had sex mostly for his partner's benefit. He thinks in somewhat negative terms about his own asexuality.  
> -Words used for Elias's anatomy: breasts, clit, cunt.

It’s not until after the show, when the lights come on and the curtains rise and they must make their way back out into the world, that Jon regrets the wine. He hadn’t kept track, exactly, of how often Elias solicitously tipped the mouth of the bottle to refill his glass, but he rather suspects it wasn’t a 50-50 split. Elias, at least, seems in full possession of his own faculties.

Granted, it’s always hard to tell with Elias. Jon’s watched him put away a similarly sized bottle on his own before, to no noticeable effect. How such a small man has such a capacity for alcohol is anyone’s guess.

Jon rises, suddenly and unpleasantly aware of the weight of his body. He’s not drunk enough for the floor to tilt beneath his feet, but he does have to stand still and let the dizzy head-rush subside for longer than usual before he can start walking. All his limbs are very _there,_ each in need of its own individual attention, so his concentration is completely consumed with keeping them all moving in tandem.

He’s honestly rather proud of his efforts. He manages to navigate through the murmuring crowd of suits and sober, well-cut dresses without tripping into anyone or staggering about, all the way out the front doors and into the night.

Chilly early-autumn air greets him with a kiss, a cool cloth for his fevered brow. He shuffles himself off to the side to stand and squint up at the low, clouded night sky, orange with reflected light. 

A hand touches his elbow. “Are you alright, Jon?” 

Elias’s face and hair and eyes are all monochrome, washed out to the same yellow as the streetlights. He doesn’t look concerned so much as merely curious.

Jon drags in a deep breath, as if the crispness of it in his lungs might shock him back to sobriety. “Fine, yes. I just needed a moment.” He wants a smoke. What he _needs_ is to not have gotten drunk in front of his boss at a very lovely play, but that ship’s rather sailed. 

“Overindulged a bit, have you?” Elias chuckles. “Well, here, sit down a spell while I call us a cab.” His grip on Jon’s elbow is light, and yet Jon feels anchored by it, unable to do anything but be steered as Elias maneuvers them both over to the low stone bench in front of the building. 

No longer being touched, Jon still feels as if his body now orbits Elias, caught in the well of his gravity and unable to move away. They are sitting very close together. Tim’s words drift back through his mind, the way they have been all evening: _Y_ _ou know he’s trying to get into your pants, right?_

And even though Jon doesn’t believe that, and wouldn’t go for it even if he did, the thought still sends a wave of alarm pulsing through him. Sometimes it matters more to people what a thing looks like than what it really is - that’s a lesson he’s had to learn the hard way, over and over again. 

“Oh - oh, no,” he stammers out, teeth and tongue clumsy forming the words, slow to push them out, “that’s fine, I can - it’s not long to the Tube station at all from here, a walk’ll do me good -”

Elias glances at him, eyebrows raised, and lays his finger briefly on his lips. _Shh._

Duly shushed, Jon sits back and begins mentally justifying. Nothing wrong with sharing a cab, is there? Offering him a ride home when he’s gone and gotten himself this drunk - not wasted, no, but certainly proper tipsy, even a bit beyond - during a _cultural outing,_ of all things, is just the good thing for a boss to do. Probably, Elias is just embarrassed for him, and wants to make sure he doesn’t trip and bust his head or fall down an open manhole or something. Probably, in fact, he has entirely made an ass of himself, and Elias is going to have some quietly scathing words to say to him about it on Monday, and he’s never going to be offered an opportunity like this again, which -

Which… will… be fine, although he will, of course, be sorry to have disappointed Elias so. He can’t say he hasn’t enjoyed the time spent talking shop over lunch, or being treated to the occasional lovely dinner when Elias catches him leaving late.

(The scolding, he thinks, is always a bit hypocritical, given that Elias is usually still there when he leaves no matter how late it is. Sometimes, Jon wonders if he sleeps there.)

But it isn’t entirely appropriate. He can admit that. Not because Elias has any - any _carnal ambitions_ towards him, but because they ought to keep their relationship professional. As his manager, Elias can’t be his friend, and that’s just how it should be. He’s always had a casual sort of management style, hands-off and pleasant, and Jon let himself get carried away.

“Yours is a bit of a drive away, isn’t it?” Elias asks. “How about you stay the night over and catch a ride home in the morning?”

“I - what?” Jon cranes around, shocked, staring into the even set of Elias’s face. “Stay - at your _house,_ do you mean?”

“I can hardly invite you into anyone else’s house, can I?” Like it’s the most natural thing in the world for him to offer. “I’ve got a spare room, and I live close. It’ll just be more convenient. Of course…" He frowns, just a little, the shadows shifting on his face. "You don't have to. I wouldn't want to make you uncomfortable."

How perfectly ungracious of him to have recoiled back from the offer like he'd been handed a snake. But then, Jon always finds himself responding to things the worst possible way, and always with such earnest good intentions. The last thing he wants to do is make Elias feel like he's done something wrong, like Jon isn't _comfortable_ with him.

"No," Jon says. "It's fine, you didn't - that sounds fine, sure. Convenient." Besides, he can't very well say he's _not_ burning with curiosity to see where Elias lives. 

Even sat beside Jon on the bench outside the theatre, well into the night, Elias just looks like he's been transplanted from his office. To picture him going home, trading the suit - a few years out of fashion but well-kept, sharply tailored - for a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, settling onto a couch with a glass of wine and a novel - the mind simply rebels. It feels like running into a schoolteacher at the grocery store always did, back in primary when they didn't really seem like real people. 

The cab pulls up and in they go. Elias holds the door for Jon, cane tucked under his arm, and climbs in after him. The address he gives the driver is very close indeed. Jon barely has time to fret about what a terrible idea this is before the car pulls to a stop in front of a tall, well-kept Victorian townhouse. 

This time Elias offers him a hand up out of the cab. His hand is hot and clammy and not particularly pleasant to hold, but Jon doesn’t let go as he’s led through the narrow, wrought-iron gate and up the short walk to the front door. There’s something charmingly human about Elias having sweaty palms. Maybe he’s as nervous about inviting Jon home as Jon is about being invited.

 _And maybe he’s thinking about making a move._ That thought comes in a voice that sounds distressingly like Tim’s. Jon pushes it to the back of his mind.

Just inside the door is a low bench, where Elias takes a seat to remove his shoes. Jon stands there just watching him unlace them for probably thirty seconds before he realizes he ought to do the same.

His socks, Jon notes, are solid black at the toe and ankle, but stitched with green paisley swoops along the foot. That’s also terribly charming.

Somewhat dazed, Jon follows Elias silently through what is clearly a well-practiced homecoming ritual. After the shoes are taken off and tucked beneath the bench, he stands and slips his jacket off, hanging it neatly on the rack across the entryway. He drops his cufflinks into a shallow bowl, hangs his keyring on a little strip of hooks just above the bowl, and leads Jon into a warmly furnished sitting room, deftly unbuttoning his vest with one hand as he goes. 

“Have a seat anywhere you like,” Elias says, gesturing about the room. “I’ll be right back.” He drops his vest carelessly over the back of the couch and disappears through the doorway to his right, which, from Jon’s limited vantage, looks like it might be the kitchen.

Jon stands, paralyzed with choice. It’s a large room, really, made small and cozily close by the dark shelves lining the walls and the solid furniture. Most of it’s antique, too, not in the shabby sense of the things he and Georgie had scrounged from secondhand shops to furnish their first apartment together, but in the sturdy-as-hell manner of furniture handmade by artisans to pass down through generations. It’s a more opulent style than he would have expected from Elias, all deeply polished wood and plush stuffed cushions and intricate patterns. 

Finally, he sits gingerly on the edge of the sofa, on the opposite end from where Elias left his vest. He traces the smooth lines of the scrollwork on the curled arm of it and then the rougher texture of the looping gold embroidery. The sleek flatscreen television on its stand ought to look incongruous in the middle of this room, but it doesn’t. Jon is the only thing there that feels out of place.

Presently, Elias comes shuffling back in, holding a tray in both hands with his cane hooked over his elbow, a look of tight concentration on his face.

Alarmed, Jon starts to stand. “Oh, let me help with -”

“Sit, Jon,” Elias says firmly. “I’ve got it.”

Jon sits, feeling a distant guilt, the voice of his grandmother in his head telling him he ought to serve the company - but he _is_ the company now, he supposes.

His help is most assuredly not needed. Elias delivers the tray onto the table without issue, then takes up the decanter and pours a generous measure of amber liquid into each of the tumblers on it. No cheap plastic or even fine glass, those; they’re cut crystal, beautifully etched. Jon picks one up, savoring the weight of it. He rolls it between his two hands, not yet sure if he wants to have more to drink.

“Just a little nightcap,” Elias explains, sitting back and sipping at his own. “Wine is lovely, but I prefer a good scotch, I have to say.”

Just a sip can’t hurt. From the dim vestiges of his childhood rises a memory of being told - repeatedly - it was rude to spurn drink or food his host gave him, and he certainly doesn’t wish to be rude. 

Jon’s not much of a hard-liquor person, but he can tell it’s high-quality. The single sip he takes slides like silken fire down his throat, filling his mouth with its smoky taste and his chest with blooming warmth. He takes another, deeper drink to follow the first, then lowers the glass, rubbing his thumbs over the chunky angles of it. 

They sit in silence. Left to his own devices, Jon doesn’t mind silence at all, but when it occurs in company it always gives him the sense of having dropped his end of the conversational rope. With Elias, though, it isn’t like that. Elias is quiet with such an inwardly abstracted air, as if he’s thinking of twenty different things at once, all much more arresting than Jon’s presence. But then whenever he does turn his attention back outwards, the intensity of its focus is like standing beneath a floodlight.

What Elias says, when he finally does speak, is, “And is it to your taste?”

“It’s - yes, it’s fine, not that I’m much of a judge.” To show willing, Jon takes another, hastier drink. “Lovely, really.” Ought he ask about the - the vintage, or the age? Is vintage only for wine? Neither would mean anything to him, but Elias might like the chance to talk about it. “It tastes… dreadfully expensive.”

Elias chuckles into his own scotch. “I wouldn’t say _dreadfully,_ but it’s not bottom-shelf, certainly. You’re a man who warrants quality, Jon.”

Jon doesn’t know what to say to that at all. He buys himself time with a long, slow pull of the scotch, which goes down smoother with each drink. 

Elias sets his glass aside and undoes his tie, dropping it over the back of the couch along with his jacket. Then he pops open the first few buttons of his shirt, revealing the hollow of his throat and a hint of his shadowed, jutting collarbone.

With effort, Jon tears his gaze away from that triangle of bared flesh. “How -” His voice catches in his throat. He wets his unaccountably dry mouth, then tries again. “How did you like the play? It was one of my favorites back in uni, though I can’t say our campus productions of it were done so well.”

Which is quite a successful gambit - the way most of Jon’s are decidedly not - in moving the subject away from anything that feels dangerous. Elias carries on quite knowledgeably about the play itself, the troupe that had put it on, and then the history of the theatre. It is, Jon gathers, one he attends often. He has some particular opinions about recent renovations, if anything that happened when Jon was thirteen can be properly called _r_ _ecent._

A bit of prodding from Jon gets him going about the playwright himself, some Scottish fellow whose larger body of work Jon is hardly acquainted with. He’d read a few scripts after he first saw the play and simply not found them engaging, though the way Elias talks about them makes him think maybe he misjudged.

All in all, Jon judges it quite a successful conversation. The rosy glow inside his chest isn’t _just_ from the alcohol. He’s aware enough of the ways in which he tends to blight social interactions; meanwhile, it’s just so consistently _easy_ to speak with Elias. There are hardly ever any of those sudden, baffling missteps, those gaping silences, those moments where it all slips out of his grasp and goes sour and he can’t figure out why until the post-mortem. Elias makes him feel understood, and more than that, he feels like _he_ understands _Elias._

Jon lifts his glass and finds it, somehow, empty. He goggles a bit - where _did_ an entire tumbler of scotch disappear to, without him even noticing? - and then puts it on the tray. Probably for the best. He’s hot and pliant, his whole body held together with loose rubber rather than tendons, his thoughts vague and drifting. He definitely doesn’t need anymore.

As soon as he puts his glass down, though, Elias goes to tip the bottle into it. Jon’s too slow to cover it with his hand. A bit desperately, he manages, “Oh, no - I shouldn’t, really, it’s fine -”

“Just another dram, then? I’d hate to waste it.” Elias stops the smooth flow of liquor into the glass, but there does remain a half inch in the bottom. 

Jon regards it warily, then shrugs. Professionalism has quite gone out the window already. “That’s really all, though,” he says, trying to be firm. “I don’t want to embarrass myself.”

“Perish the thought.” Elias smiles coolly at him, pale eyes amused. He slugs the rest of his own glass down with rather less care than it probably deserves, and doesn’t move to refill it. If it’s because he’s drunker than he wants to be, Jon certainly can’t tell. The man might as well have been sucking down icewater all evening.

Another silence descends. Jon, swaddled in the comforting confidence of drunkenness, can barely keep himself from asking point-blank why he’s here. Even _he_ isn’t socially inept enough to think that being brought back to his boss’s house for post-dinner drinks is entirely normal. Elias, in private, seems more _like him_ in some indefinable way, closer to Jon’s side of whatever imaginary line it is that divides him from what feels like - most of the time - the entire rest of the human population, but Jon can’t imagine he’s oblivious to the implications either. Not with how well he conducts himself in public, how quick and flashing his conversation and insight are.

What ends up coming out is only barely better. “Is this how you normally spend your Friday evenings?”

“Close enough. Provided there aren’t any fires to put out -” he waves a hand vaguely, encompassing all manner of business-related disasters - “I like to relax at home. Usually only in my own company, which I can’t say I mind, though yours is certainly a pleasant addition. Generally, I get a bit _more_ relaxed when left to my own devices.” One side of his ever-present smile tugs just a bit higher. 

“More relaxed?” Jon echoes doubtfully.

Elias is in as relaxed a state as Jon could ever imagine seeing him, sleeves rolled up to his elbows - which has bared a fascinating blotch of bruise on the inside of his left arm that Jon’s been struggling not to stare at for the last few minutes - and collar unbuttoned, his hair stirred loose of its careful pomade courtesy of his habit of running a hand back through it while carrying on. In his sock feet, too. Jon tries to imagine _more relaxed_ and a ridiculous image flashes through his mind of Elias buttoned up as formally as usual, but with his bare toes flexing in the thick pile of his carpet. It’s almost stranger than imagining him naked.

“Oh yes,” Elias says. “In fact -” He leans forward and pulls open a drawer on the TV stand, then withdraws a small wooden box. Thankfully, it gives Jon time to smooth the reflexive horror that came with that last impulsive thought off his face. “You wouldn’t begrudge a man his vices in his own home, would you, Jon?”

“I - er -” A distinctive skunky smell wafts from the box once it’s opened, and for once, Jon finds himself quick on the uptake. Not a vice he would have suspected Elias of, but - “No, not at all.” 

There’s no snide voice in the back of Jon’s head repeating Tim’s words anymore. The situation’s gone entirely beyond that. His brain is too pickled to be startled by anything at this point.

Elias places the box itself between them on the couch, in what little space remains - and when had he shifted so close? The way he removes each object from within it feels like a carefully practiced ritual. His movements aren’t quick, but they are deliberate and familiar, and despite the tremor of his hands, very graceful. He rolls a narrow, smoothly symmetrical joint, then packs the whole kit away before he raises it to his lips to light.

He inhales. Holds it, tendrils of white smoke curling out from between his parted lips. Then breathes out slow and heavy through his nose, twin plumes of smoke dissipating into a cloudy haze around their heads. 

“The vape is better for my lungs, of course,” he confides in Jon, just a little hoarse, “but there’s just something so _physical_ about doing it this way that I can’t help but like. So much more… intimate, wouldn’t you agree?”

Jon shrugs. “I can’t say I’ve ever, er, partaken much myself, so I wouldn’t know.” There’d been one time, at a little gathering with a couple of Georgie’s friends and someone he knew from class, but it had made him so terribly anxious that he’d never wanted to try again. 

“Not much?” Elias echoes. “But you have?” 

Jon waggles a noncommittal hand. “A time or two in uni. It didn’t go very well.”

“Ah.” Elias doesn’t ask any further, but the lift of his eyebrows is very knowing. He leans forward again to snatch up the remote.

It turns out he watches game shows. _Recorded_ game shows, as a matter of fact. He scrolls through his DVR until he finds an episode of Jeopardy he apparently dearly wishes to see, then leans back to watch, now and then taking a deep hit off the joint held so casually between his fingers. He cups his elbow in his opposite hand when he smokes.

Making room in his mental concept of Elias for things like _trivia shows_ takes a bit of work, though not as much as it might have. It’s something Jon can enjoy as well, as much for the smug thrill of knowing the answer as for the tension of anticipation.

On that score, too, Elias proves to be quite similar. They entertain themselves and each other with their own private contest, calling out the answers, sharing derisive eye-rolls at the foolishness of the contestants. Jon fancies himself a well-read man, but Elias beats him handily. He’s gracious enough about it that Jon doesn’t mind too badly.

Somewhere along the way, Jon finds his glass empty. He’s proper drunk, now, deep enough in it to enjoy it and to want to keep it going. He glances at the decanter, still two-thirds full, then pulls his gaze deliberately away. The point in the evening at which he starts _wanting_ to drink more is exactly when he needs to stop.

“I’ve been quite selfish,” Elias announces all of a sudden, over the falsetto chirruping of a fast-forwarded commercial. 

Before Jon can ask how he figures, Elias thrusts the smoldering joint, now half smoked, in front of his nose, so Jon has to rear back and cross his eyes to see it.

“I ought to have asked if you wanted to try. Do you? This _is_ top-shelf stuff, so to speak. I smoke it for, well, a lot of reasons, really -” a dry, self-deprecating chuckle - “can’t pretend I don’t enjoy it, but it _is_ medicinal as well. Shouldn’t give you any paranoid fits.”

The answer ought properly to be _no._ Tonight Jon has crossed line after line, but this one, even drunk as he is, is less like a line and more like a cliff he’s teetering right on the edge of. He doesn’t want to find out what happens if he topples over it.

But what his traitorous mouth says is, “Er, yes, sure.”

He expects Elias to hand him the joint. What Elias _does_ is take another deep drag off it, then turn to Jon, grasp his jaw in one hot hand, dig his fingertips in just enough to make Jon open up, slot their mouths together, and breathe the smoke out into him. 

Entirely on automatic, Jon inhales. Elias releases him just in time for him to break out into a spectacular coughing fit.

“Oh, my. Here.” A glass is pressed into Jon’s hand. He takes a deep swig without even thinking, chokes a bit, and swallows down the scotch. The effort of swallowing disrupts the spasming of his diaphragm, at least, and mostly makes the coughing stop, though his throat and lungs still burn.

His lips do, too.

He squints as dourly at Elias as he can, aware even as he does of a tear running down one side of his face. Just whose glass had that been, and when had it been refilled? And what had Elias _meant_ with that stunt?

“You really have quit smoking, haven’t you?” is all Elias says. He takes another long hit, chest rising, then blows it out in a thick plume. “Would you like another?”

He leans into Jon, this time, fingertips just barely pressing into the soft skin under his chin, and after Jon’s breathed in his breath he doesn’t pull away but instead deepens it into a proper kiss. His mouth tastes like scotch and weed. 

Jon puts his hands flat against Elias’s shoulders, caught frozen between dragging him in closer and pushing him away.  
  
“Don’t tell me,” Elias whispers against his lips, “that you’re getting cold feet _now_ of all times, Jonathan.”

Jon tightens his grip, but doesn’t otherwise move. His mind races, desperately, trying to trace a link from the decorous evening spent watching a play to this moment, Elias halfway in his lap and kissing him. What signals has he inadvertently given or accepted? 

His mind swims, rather, too heavy and sodden to react in a timely manner. It doesn’t seem such an urgently terrible idea to let Elias keep kissing him. His panic, which moments before he was so sure was the only logical response, bleeds away into the dumb, grinning acceptance of drunkenness.

Elias is attractive, true, but more than that, he’s _compelling._ He’s always so well put-together, so blandly polite, and yet there’s such a light burning behind his grey eyes, such a weight to his regard. That, more than any aspect of his physical appearance, is what draws Jon to him so. And Jon can admit, now, in the privacy of his own mind at least, that he is drawn.

 _He’s trying to get in your pants, you know._ That’s still an outcome Jon has no interest in. A bit of friendly necking, though, he’s never objected to that...

He ends up pressed back against the rolled arm of the sofa, Elias in his lap, breathing pungent smoke into his mouth. After the third time, Jon finally pulls away enough to beg off. He’s so full of it he thinks he might float away entirely if he has anymore. 

Elias, damn him, is perhaps a bit more relaxed, some invisible tension sloughed off. His smile is looser, wider but less sharp than usual, and his eyes are distinctly bloodshot. Aside from that, he hardly seems intoxicated at all.

“Not fair,” Jon mumbles. 

Elias simply laughs and kisses him, one hand braced on his chest and one buried in his hair at the back of his head. When Jon closes his eyes he falls backwards through space in slow motion, not a plunge so much as a gentle dizzy drift, anchored only by the heat of Elias’s mouth, the slide of Elias’s tongue on his teeth.

What to do with his hands during these interludes has always given Jon trouble. At least right now he’s almost entirely free of his usual self-consciousness, and can settle them on Elias’s waist with barely a pang of doubt. He still doesn’t know how far he wants to take this. Dimly, he thinks he ought to figure out soon, or else Elias is going to decide for both of them -

Quite proving his point, Elias untucks Jon’s shirt from his pants to slide a hand up under it. The muscles of his belly shiver under the touch. His breath catches and pools heavy in his lungs. Part of him simply wants to luxuriate in being stroked by those clever, warm fingers, but nothing can entirely do away with the vigilant part of him that’s always worried where this is going to lead. People always make such assumptions, so any touch is fraught with the potential for misunderstanding, for Jon to have to interrupt, grab a wrist and awkwardly explain -

“Relax,” Elias murmurs. He mouths along the line of Jon’s jaw, then down his neck, trailing soft, wet little kisses, his lips hot on Jon’s thrumming pulse. His hand moves up towards the less fraught geography of Jon’s chest.

Less, but not entirely so. His thumb brushes over one of Jon’s stiff nipples, and Jon can’t help the way he jolts or the humiliating, whimpery noise that comes out of him. There’s a dangerous pause, and then Elias rubs it quite deliberately, in tight little circles. Jon tips his head back and closes his eyes, but Elias’s gaze lays like a blade against his face.

“Is that good, Jon?” Elias asks, voice no more than a puff of breath against Jon’s throat. 

It is, and he doesn’t want it to be, and he’s almost certain that he doesn’t want to have Elias’s hands in his shirt, and he doesn’t think he can say so. He doesn’t know what he wants. Elias is so light in his lap, so much smaller up close like this than he seems the rest of the time, and yet as immovable as if he were made of stone.

Elias pinches his nipple between thumb and forefinger, gently at first and then tighter, until it’s just on the edge of pain and then tips over the edge of pain and then comes right up to too much - and then he lets go. Presses a soft, open-mouth kiss to the corner of Jon’s mouth, rubs at the abused part with his thumb, all tenderness.

“I want to make you feel good, Jon,” Elias says, mouth on Jon’s skin, words a vibration from his throat to Jon’s bones. 

He does the same with his other hand on the other side of Jon’s chest, shifting atop Jon’s lap in a way that invites Jon to shift beneath him, with him. When it starts to hurt he catches Jon’s mouth and draws the pain out into himself. The pain is cloudy, hazy, like it’s happening to a body that isn’t quite his. The pleasure is diffuse, a lead blanket weighing him down.

Jon is making noise. Moaning into Elias’s mouth, arching into the clever play of those cruel hands. It is cruel, isn’t it? It’s so calculated, like his body is an instrument Elias has played for years. 

Jon lifts a hand from Elias’s hip and puts it on his chest, maybe meaning to push him away, maybe meaning to draw him closer, maybe - he doesn’t know. But when he does, Elias pulls back, hands braced against him, and smiles.

“You can touch me too,” he says. “I don’t bite.” Oh, but what big teeth he has, so many and so straight and white. Jon thinks he does bite, will bite. Jon thinks he might have been bitten already, might be bleeding and not know it.

Jon watches his hands slowly slip each of Elias’s buttons free. They’re tiny, pearlescent, the shirt such fine fabric. Inch by inch, the pale skin of Elias’s body is revealed. His collarbone is a shelf, his belly soft, his skin dusted with pale hair. He has breasts, which catches Jon by surprise for only a moment - they’re small and pointed, tipped with pale pink nipples, and when Jon hesitantly frames them with his hands Elias takes his wrists and moves his hands until they’re pressed into his palms.

“You can touch me,” he says again. “Anywhere you like. I trust I don’t need to… explain myself to you?”

“No,” Jon whispers, a dry creak of sound. No, he isn’t ignorant here, just surprised. It’s on the tip of his tongue to say _me too,_ to finally say that to anyone, but he swallows it back. He doesn’t want to have to explain himself, doesn’t want to risk Elias not understanding.

He squeezes a bit, cupping the spare handfuls of flesh, Elias’s nipples taut against his palms. That feels good, little warm sparks of contact that go rolling up his arms. A little tighter and Elias sighs out between his teeth, eyes going half-lidded.

This is another one of the parts Jon always gets wrong. It isn’t that he doesn’t like to touch people, it’s just that they make _a_ _ssumptions._ Jon enjoys the tactile experience of exploring a body with his fingertips, all the dips and curves, the hard places where bone is close to the skin and the soft folds and swells where it isn’t. He likes to touch slick old scars, hair whether it’s downy or rough and wiry, stretch marks, all the geography of a body as a monument to growth. What he doesn’t like is being called a tease.

The body he’s most recently familiar with is Georgie’s, years ago though that was. Elias is quite a contrast: pale where she was brown; sparse hair downy and nearly white compared to the rougher, thicker texture of hers; all angles - his collarbone, the shadows of his ribs, his jutting hipbones - with a soft but nearly flat stomach where Georgie had been lush and round and warm. 

Here and there Jon finds a bruise like the one on his arm. There’s a fresh blue one on the top of his right breast, a fading yellow one the size of Jon’s hand wrapping around his ribs on the same side, a strange stippled series of four round ones along the ridge of his left hipbone. Jon glides his fingertips lightly over them, feeling like he can feel the broken capillaries, the echo of pain. Elias shivers under his touch, skin pebbling up in gooseflesh.

Elias lets him touch, watching him look. There’s less of that usual awful sense of pressure, or maybe time is just so loose and elastic it only _feels_ like a long time before Elias leans in to kiss him again.

While he does, Jon explores the shifting musculature of his back, the sharp wings of his shoulderblades, the knobbly line of his spine. When his drifting fingers encounter the waist of Elias’s trousers he jerks them back, earning a rumbling chuckle against his mouth.

“You know,” Elias says, pulling back a bit to look into Jon’s eyes, “I think you’re a bit overdressed.” Again he slides his hands under the hem of Jon’s shirt, this time to tug at it meaningfully.

“I’m -” what Jon wants to say is that he’s fine, that he doesn’t want to undress, that every piece of clothing which comes off is one step closer to the line he doesn’t want to cross. What ends up coming out is, “I’m hot.” True, but not helping his case.

Elias briskly rolls his shirt up over his head, sweatervest and all. Jon lifts his arms to let it come off, doesn’t move to pick the rumpled wad of clothing back up off the floor where Elias drops it.

This time when Elias crowds in against him, they are skin to skin, Elias’s pointed breasts against his own narrow, flat chest. Jon smooths his hands down Elias’s sides, ribs to hips, down and back up, down and back up, palms memorizing the shape of him.

Had he been asked at the beginning of the night, Jon would have said the last thing he wanted was to end up half-naked on his boss’s stuffy old sofa, being fondled and kissed by the man. And yet here he is, and he can’t say it’s an unpleasant experience. Elias is so warm, his mouth and hands so clever, and god, but Jon has longed so desperately for touch. He’s always curled so tightly into himself, so wary, unable to lower his defenses for anyone to get through, but the simple press of another person’s skin against his has eased some knot within him he hadn’t even realized was so tight.

And it’s another thing that’s easy with Elias in ways it hasn’t been before. Elias doesn’t let his hands stray to places Jon doesn’t want touched. Elias doesn’t try to grab Jon’s hand and put it between his legs, where he must surely wish to be touched by now. Elias doesn’t call him a tease. Elias straddles his lap and grinds - yes, that’s what it is, a purposeful rolling of his slim hips down against Jon - against him and doesn’t say a word, not one word, about how Jon isn’t hard.

When Elias pulls away to sit up, Jon follows after him, kiss-dazed and dreamy. Elias chuckles and pushes him gently back with just his fingertips. Agreeably enough, Jon leans back, letting Elias pet at the dark curls on his chest.

“It’s getting a bit late -” a pointed glance over his bare shoulder, at the magnificent clock hung up on the wall, all brass and polished wood - “don’t you think? We ought to head up to bed.”

Jon swallows. It doesn’t seem to have been an invitation, or a demand, and yet... “I suppose so,” he says, feigning nonchalance. He doesn’t think he does it very well. 

Elias rises smoothly to his feet and, smiling, offers Jon a hand. Jon’s rise is trickier; things in his back and neck pop and crackle, and there’s a bad moment where he has to twist and roll his shoulder as it threatens to slip out of its socket entirely. His back, he suspects gloomily, is going to be murder tomorrow. 

The floor tilts unsteadily under his feet when he makes for the stairs. They’re narrow, curving up to the unseen second and third floors. A vision strikes Jon with unpleasant clarity of teetering backwards and toppling halfway up those stairs, hitting every wooden edge on the way down…

An arm snakes around his waist and steers him away from them. “Not the stairs,” Elias says, “not in the sort of state we’re in, good God. I had a lift installed.”

“You installed a lift… for when you get drunk?” As soon as he says it, Jon knows that’s ridiculous, but it’s so hard to think properly.

Elias laughs, not unkindly. “No, but it’s a nice bonus, isn’t it? No, stairs are… difficult for me at the best of times.”

Jon hasn’t dared ask about the cane, or the way Elias’s hands often tremble, or the livid flush he’s seen mottling the man’s fingertips from time to time. There are some things that are simply private. He can’t pretend he hasn’t been curious, though, and he tucks this tidbit away with all the other little things he’s gleaned during their - their -

Oh, hell. He supposes they probably _have_ been dates, haven’t they?

He leans against the smooth wall of the lift, arms crossed over his chest, feeling suddenly terribly exposed. Elias stands half-dressed, leaning on his cane, as easily as if he were wearing one of his suits.

The second floor comes all too soon. 

Jon follows Elias out. His gaze flickers around the narrow hall, lined with old-fashioned wallpaper and too many doors. Is each of those a bedroom? The hall stretches out impossibly far, doors multiplying along its length, and the only fixed point he has is the pale shape of Elias’s narrow back moving through the murk.

Finally, they stop at one of the many doors. It opens smoothly, with a genteel whisper of a creak, and Jon follows Elias in.

The room inside does not look much like any guest room Jon’s ever seen. A massive four-post bed looms in the middle of the room - curtained and everything, good lord - holding court. Solid wooden furniture, dresser and wardrobe and vanity, ring the walls. Everywhere Jon looks is some new detail to draw the eye, not the sort of bland space-fillers people put up in bedrooms meant for guest use but the type of personal bric-a-brac that accumulates over years spent in a single room. Here a framed photo, there an open book, there a half-empty water glass sat on top of the dresser and evidently forgotten.

Jon turns, meaning to apologize for having so carelessly lost track of himself, for having invaded what is quite obviously the private heart of Elias’s home - and there Elias is, standing right behind him, in front of the closed door.

Elias takes his wrist, smiling. A gentle sort of smile, but there’s something glittering at its edge, an impression of teeth. The bite at last, not threatened so much as implied.

“Come to bed with me, Jon,” he says, pulling Jon towards that enormous bed. His grip is not hard, and he’s not exerting any particular amount of force, and yet Jon comes along as helplessly as if he were a balloon on a string. When Elias releases him, he sits down on the high mattress, noting absently how comfortably firm it is.

“I don’t - I don’t know,” Jon says, teeth tripping over his own tongue. This, surely, is beyond any bounds of propriety. A ridiculous thought, that, and yet he can’t shake the feeling of a line having been irrevocably crossed, perhaps as far back as the threshold of that quiet door.

And yet he lays back, with just the barest pressure of Elias’s hand on his chest. And yet he scoots up onto the bed when Elias kneels over him, knees on either side of his waist, bracketing him in. And yet he opens his mouth to the touch of Elias’s lips and kisses back, even reaches up to cup the bony jut of Elias’s shoulder in his palm. 

“It’s alright,” Elias murmurs. “Don’t worry. It’s all perfectly alright.”

Another pleasant interlude of kissing follows. Jon lets himself melt into it, cradled in the embrace of that astonishing mattress, pinned in place by Elias above him. His stomach flutters with nerves, though he tries to convince himself it’s arousal. His body is as reactive as ever, which is to say not at all, not the way people want it to be. Maybe if Elias notices, he’ll decide he doesn’t want Jon after all.

Following that line of thought, it’s almost a relief when Elias reaches between them and takes hold of Jon’s belt. Still as stone, barely breathing, Jon lies there and lets Elias unbuckle it. The clink of the clasp and the slow leathery slide of the belt both seem so loud, and yet the heavy atmosphere of the room drinks them up, so it’s only in his own ears that they echo. 

He comes alive not with the rasp of his zipper going down but when Elias slides a warm hand into the front of his pants and cups his flaccid cock. Then he reaches out and grabs Elias’s wrist, squeezing spasmodically, suddenly awash in fear. He can’t bear the idea of lying there while Elias fruitlessly fondles him, getting more and more impatient.

Elias goes still, though he doesn’t remove his hand. Jon has to pull it out himself. When he lets go, it drops to rest on his clothed thigh. 

“Jon?” Elias sits back, looking down at him with his head cocked to the side. The only light in the room is what spills in from the window on the far wall; in that uneven illumination, Elias’s face is shadowed, his eyes colorless and gleaming.

“I don’t - I’m not -” Jon swallows hard, trying to summon the words. This is what he hadn’t wanted to do, this explanation. “I won’t be able to - I’ve had a lot to drink,” he hits on finally, not untrue, “and I don’t - I don’t need anything.” Not _I don’t want anything,_ because he doesn’t want to imply he doesn’t _want_ Elias. He does. He thinks he does. He doesn’t know what he thinks. All he knows is that what he most wants is to simply close his eyes and drift into sleep and untangle this all tomorrow with a clearer head.

 _Tomorrow evening, maybe,_ he thinks ruefully. Most of the day is going to be spent shuffling blearily about and popping aspirin, he suspects.

“Are you sure?” Elias’s tone is so terribly solicitous. “I don’t wish to be selfish, Jon. You’re so lovely, you know, you deserve to relax.”

This is always the worst part, the very worst. It’s not the awkwardness of explaining, the scramble for words to describe this lack inside himself, defined only by the edges where something everyone else seems to possess ought to be but isn’t; it’s having to disappoint an eager would-be lover. Having to hand back the freely offered gift, _no thank you._

“Thank you, but I’m sure. I don’t - I really don’t. I’m happy to just - whatever you want.” And then it’ll be over with and he can go to sleep and tomorrow they can hash it out when Jon can string more than two thoughts together. He rests his hands on Elias’s hips, then goes to fumble at Elias’s belt, a clear invitation. 

“Well, if you do insist…” Elias doesn’t help Jon divest him of his trousers. Instead he curves over Jon’s body to kiss him again, hands planted on either side of his head. 

Once the belt is taken care of, Jon grasps Elias daringly by the hips and shifts him. He lets himself be shifted agreeably enough. Between his inebriation and his nerves, Jon’s coordination is shot, and he ends up rather tossing Elias onto his back at the head of the bed.

But Elias only laughs and arranges himself more comfortably, reclining back against his plush pillows and letting his legs sprawl invitingly open. Jon makes short work of his button and zipper, and now at least he does lift his hips to allow Jon to pull his trousers off.

“How about -” Jon licks his lips, considering the spread of Elias’s body before him. He has a handful of old tricks, all bubbling up now from the depths of memory. “I could - would you like if I used my mouth?”

“Why, Jonathan,” Elias purrs, “that would be lovely.” And even though he’s the one spread out nearly naked, offering himself up, Jon still feels like a meal.

It’s been a long time, and even having offered, Jon has to steel his nerves. He starts at Elias’s mouth with a deep, lingering kiss, then moves down the man’s body. Elias is wonderfully responsive beneath him, shifting and shivering, and for whole stretches of seconds Jon’s able to get lost in the simple act of drawing reactions out of him, action and effect divorced entirely of intent and context in his mind. 

Elias, he finds, likes a hint of teeth; when Jon closes them gently around one stiff nipple, Elias cups the back of his head and whispers, “Bite me,” and Jon does. When he pulls away and laps apologetically at the abused flesh, his tongue finds a ring of indentations pressed deep into Elias’s skin. No doubt they’ll be bruises tomorrow.

He hooks his fingers in the waist of Elias’s boxer-briefs and peels them down, pausing for just a moment to observe the parts so exposed. Elias’s thatch of pubic curls is pale and downy and neatly trimmed, framing the jut of his hard - clit, Jon supposes he’ll think of it, in the absence of any directions to the contrary from Elias - in much the way an expertly pruned hedge might offer up the front porch of a home. Without being urged, Elias draws one leg up, spreading himself further open for Jon’s benefit.

Jon puts his mouth to Elias’s thigh. In the near lightlessness of the room, they’re both just grey, the boundaries of their bodies vague and fuzzy. The skin under his lips is soft, covered in downy, tickling hair, and striped with regular lumps of slick, smooth tissue that feel like scars. A darker blobby stripe across the front of his thigh turns out to be, when Jon’s practically got his nose on it, a tattoo. 

That’s incongruous enough to jar Jon out of his half-hypnotized state. Utterly charmed, he rubs his thumb over the length of it and asks, “What’s this?”

A brief silence, then Elias lets out a rueful snort. “A bad decision I made in college. I figured I might as well leave it as a reminder, since it’s not as if many people see it anyway.”

Jon tries to imagine it: Elias young, no silver in his hair, no fine net of crow’s feet or laugh lines, drunk or maybe high in some tattooist’s shop with his mates getting egged on while the tattoo gun whirs, stamping ink into his bare thigh. The Elias he knows, sliding into late middle aged and with that sort of quiet, academic dignity, keeps overlaying the image.

“What’s it say?” It looks like words, insofar as Jon can see. With his thumbnail, he traces what he thinks are the lines of the letters.

“Oh, lord, Jon, I don’t remember, it was thirty years ago. Something in Latin I thought was terribly clever at the time.” Gently, he knocks his knee into Jon’s shoulder. “Haven’t you more pressing matters to concern yourself with?”

That Jon does. He takes a deep breath and turns to the task at hand. Elias is as slim here as anywhere else on his body, with neat tucked-up lips and only the barest padding of fat on his mons pubis, hardly any need to spread him open with fingers to get at him. 

Jon nuzzles into his pubic hair, breathing in shallowly through his mouth. The scent of him here isn’t bad, merely strong. He lips at the tip of Elias’s clit, then flicks his tongue out to explore the shape of it, the way the hood falls back from the swollen head. Then down, between his lips, smearing through his slick; he’s already so wet. It gives Jon a pang of - something, uneasy pride, nervous accomplishment - to think that’s because of him, because of a few minutes in his lap being groped by his inexpert hands. 

Like riding a bicycle, his body remembers what to do, though his muscles surely aren’t used to it. First the exploration, gauging what Elias likes, what makes him shift and shudder, what makes him gasp, what makes him rock his hips up and moan Jon’s name breathlessly to the ceiling. Finding the best position, too, his head cocked a bit to the side, so he can still breathe a bit through his nose even when his mouth is occupied.

He’s never encountered one so big, and so his technique hovers somewhere in the awkward space between how he sucked the handful of cocks he’d encountered in his previous life and what he used to do for Georgie.

Long, firm strokes of his tongue seem to work best. When he flicks it rapidly over the very tip of the glans, Elias shudders and puts a hand in his hair. When he takes it into his mouth and sucks, cheeks hollowing, lips slick and wet around it, Elias’s fingers tighten almost painfully. He bobs his head, the wet noises of his suckling mixing with Elias’s own heavy, panting breaths. He keeps his eyes closed, relying on touch and taste, on the sounds from above, the guiding pressure of Elias’s hand.

His jaw gets quickly tired, so he starts to alternate more. A few strokes of his tongue, then moving his head, letting his wet lips do the work. Letting Elias do the work, holding his head in place and rocking up against Jon’s mouth, grinding Jon’s nose into his pubis. A dull ache starts at the base of his neck and keeps him from sinking fully into the hypnotic state of near total un-self-awareness, the state where he’s simply a mouth with something inside it rather than a person with a body. 

His elbow threatens to slide out of place, so he has to shuffle a bit and lean on his other arm. Above him, Elias makes an impatient sound at the loss of Jon’s mouth, soon rectified. 

The closer Elias gets, the more careless he is. He’s got both hands on Jon now, one fisted tightly in his hair and one digging into his shoulder. He shudders, grinding his hips in tight circles up against Jon’s face, and pushes with the hand in Jon’s hair, so Jon’s face is mashed so tightly into him that he can’t breathe.

White sparks float in at the edges of Jon’s vision. He’s beginning to think he’ll have to push himself away when Elias drags him back and allows him a series of gasping, shallow breaths, just enough to keep him going. 

It’s got to be soon. He’s got to be done soon. Jon chances wriggling a hand under himself, between his chin and Elias’s cunt, so he can press a crooked finger into him for additional stimulation. Elias clenches tight around him, moaning raggedly. His thighs squeeze Jon’s shoulders, hemming him in. He’s got his ankles crossed, heels resting on Jon’s back.

Every part of Elias stiffens up when he finally reaches his climax. He holds Jon’s face pressed tight into him as waves of shivers pass through him, as his breath catches and then comes stuttering out of him, and Jon squeezes his eyes shut tight and works him through it.

When Elias finally lets him go, he sits up dazed, sniffing through clogged nostrils. Without thinking, he reaches up to rub at his rubbed-raw cheek, and recoils instinctively from the thick slickness his fingers encounter.

“The bathroom’s that way,” Elias mumbles, flopping out an arm and flapping his hand vaguely to the left. 

Jon slides out of bed, legs jelly-like beneath him, and gropes his way through the shadows to the darker shape of an open doorway. He eases that door mostly closed before he turns the light on and squints at himself in the mirror.

His hair’s a frightful mess, going to be a nest of tangles tomorrow. The side of his face which had lain against Elias’s body is indeed reddened from the friction of his pubic hair. Jon’s nose is red too, swollen like he’s got a cold, and the lower half of his face is entirely smeared with Elias’s fluids. The thick, musky smell and taste are repulsive, suddenly, cloying and invasive in his mouth and nose. 

Ruthlessly, he grabs a hand towel and wipes his face clean. Uses a squirt of hand soap for another pass, to try and get the smell off his skin. Excavates his nostrils as much as he can with a dampened, clean side of the towel. He won’t go so far as to use Elias’s toothbrush, but he does give his teeth a vigorous fingerbrushing with a thin coat of minty toothpaste, which helps overwhelm the taste.

The face staring back at him doesn’t seem like his. He observes it, cleaned up now, and wonders distantly who that man is, still so disheveled and reddened, still so hollow in the eyes. He gives the rest of the bathroom a cursory glance, because he feels he ought to be curious, but none of it sticks; he only gets the impression of a lot of pale tile and gleaming metal fixtures, sparkling clean and neat.

A high-pitched, mechanical whine comes from the room beyond the door, startling him from his examination of the stranger’s skin he’s wearing. Once he leaves the bathroom, the room is impenetrably dark again, filled with a rhythmic whooshing. He gropes for the bed, finds it, falls upon it, falls upon Elias’s legs and earns a sleepy laugh and a reproachful nudge.

Crouched on the night-table beside Elias is a white shape studded with glowing buttons, chugging along. The sound of it reminds him unpleasantly of the last time he ever visited his grandmother in the hospital. 

He shifts onto the opposite side of the bed and lays with his back to Elias, arms crossed over his chest. Probably he ought to go find a guest room, but he’s simply much too tired to go poking about. 

Thankfully, Elias doesn’t trouble him for reciprocation, or indeed at all. Perhaps he’s already asleep. It takes Jon longer to let go of consciousness. Every time he starts to properly drift, Elias shifts behind him, or the machine makes some noise, and it startles him back into dizzy awareness. 

_You know he’s trying to get into your pants, right?_

The last bleary thought Jon has before finally falling into sodden sleep is: _Well, he didn’t._


End file.
